Critical Essay by Marilyn L. Williamson

In the following essay, Williamson views the goddess Fortune as the principal symbolic figure in Antony and Cleopatra, and finds that the tragedy of the drama is one of mighty individuals unwillingly caught among forces far beyond their understanding or control.

The fickle goddess Fortune is the most neglected person of importance in Antony and Cleopatra. Though she looms far larger in that play than in any other of Shakespeare's or in most contemporary plays, one might apply a line from the text to commentators' treatment of her: “We scorn her most when most she offers blows.”1 In Antony and Cleopatra forms of the word fortune appear forty-one times, or almost...